Devil in Tartan

by Julia London

  Her tears agitated Drustan—he suddenly stood up and went to his father’s body, which had been wrapped in a coverlet. Drustan kept trying to unwrap the body. Lottie leaped to her feet as he tried again. “Stop that. Stop that now,” she said harshly.

  Her tone only increased his agitation, and Drustan began to wail.

  “Diah, will you cease that wailing!” Mathais cried, slamming his hand against the wall.

  “Dru!” Lottie said tearfully, and rose up on her toes, wrapping her arms around Drustan’s neck as sobs wracked his body again.

  “Look away, now. Look away, mo chridhe.”

  He buried his face in his hands and sank down to the floor, unable to cease his wailing.

  “By all that is holy, make him stop!” Mathais shouted. “Is it no’ bad enough that he’s left us? Must we listen to that as well?”

  “Mats, please,” Lottie said, but her voice sounded hollow, devoid of proper emotion. She couldn’t bear their grief, not this time. She couldn’t bear her own. “We all come to acceptance the best way we can,” she heard herself say as she caressed Drustan’s head.

  “Well I have come to acceptance,” Mathais said, and moved so suddenly that he banged into a chair; it fell backward with a crash. Mathais was suddenly breathing hard, as if he’d run a great distance. Lottie sensed he was on the verge of exploding with rage and frustration. She let go of Drustan and put her arms around Mathais. The poor lad sagged, dropping his head onto her shoulder, his lanky arms loose around her waist, and fresh sobs racking his body.

  Lottie squeezed her eyes shut and let him sob until he could no longer cry. He slipped away from her, falling raggedly into a chair at the table.

  She braced her hands against the table and drew a deep breath. They were quite a trio, she and her brothers. She drew another deep breath...and slowly became aware of another in the room.

  She’d forgotten Aulay. She pushed herself up and turned around.

  His gaze was full of sympathy. “Are you all right, then?” he asked quietly.

  No. She was at sixes and sevens and felt as if she were spinning out into darkness. She shrugged indifferently.

  He took a step forward. “I would no’ intrude on your grief, Lottie, but I must speak with you.”

  “Now?” she asked weakly. Whatever it was, she had no capacity to hear it.

  “Aye, now.”

  She sighed. “What is it, then?”

  Aulay glanced at her brothers. “Privately, if you please.”

  Privately. Lottie glanced around the room, looking for something. A cloak? A wrap? Anything to delay a private conversation she was certain she didn’t want to hear.

  She glanced down at her rumpled gown and rubbed her damp palms against the soiled, torn skirt. What a fright she must look—her eyes were swollen from sobbing, her skin undoubtedly as splotchy red as poor Mathais’s. Her hair, a bird’s nest, was partially falling down her back. Had she looked such a fright in the stable? The stable. How long ago that seemed! Like a dream, a pretty little dream while her father was dying.

  Tears welled in her eyes again, but she swallowed hard, rubbed her palms on her skirt again, then forced herself to move woodenly around the table. She paused to put her hand on Mathais’s shoulder. “I’ll return directly, aye? Stay with Dru.”

  Mathais folded his arms across the table and laid his head on them.

  Lottie brushed carelessly against Aulay as she moved past and out onto the landing. On deck, Mackenzie and Livingstone men were moving about, many of them up on the masts, shouting at each other as they rolled sails.

  She folded her arms tightly across herself and made herself look at Aulay.

  “Lottie, leannan, I’m so verra sorry—”

  “No, donna say it, please,” she said, closing her eyes a moment. “I’ll fall to pieces if I hear one more condolence.”

  Aulay said nothing.

  “You could no’ have been surprised by it,” she said.

  He scrutinized her face a moment, as if uncertain what she wanted from him. “No.”

  She had not been surprised by the news, either. Shocked to her core, yes. Devastated beyond understanding, certainly. But not surprised. A part of her had known when she’d left her father this morning that it would come to this. Perhaps not as quickly as it had, but a part of her had known. She looked away, feeling the burn in her eyes again.

  “Have you eaten?” he asked.

  She dabbed at one eye. “I could no’ possibly.”

  “Drunk anything?”

  “The ale at the inn,” she said weakly.

  “Diah, Lottie, you’ll be no use to anyone if you donna mind yourself.”

  “I was no use to my father even in the best of health, was I? One might argue that I brought this on him. On us. On all of us,” she said bitterly, and tightened her hold of herself. If she didn’t, all the misery frothing in her would spill out and contaminate everything and everyone on this ship.

  “You’re no’ to blame,” he said quietly.

  “I wish I could agree with you.”

  “Ah, Lottie, lass,” he murmured, and caressed her arm. “Listen to me, aye? We must bury him.”

  We. He was being kind. How could he be so kind to her after all she’d put him through? She gave him a tremulous smile. “Please donna trouble yourself, Aulay. I know we must. We’ve a place on the island, next to my mother.”

  Aulay winced and shook his head. He wrapped his hand around her elbow and drew her closer. “I mean tonight.”

  Tonight. How could she bury her father tonight? Would they be in another port? She’d not leave her father in some foreign port! She opened her mouth to tell him so, but then understanding dawned, and she gasped, rearing back, away from him, repulsed. Enraged. Horrified.

  “You canna leave him as he is,” he said, his voice soft. “There is the issue of decay.”

  She whirled away from him, appalled, fearing she might heave. “Donna say another word!” she begged him, and pressed her hands to her abdomen to contain her distress.

  “You’ve born quite a lot in your life, and you’ll bear this, too.” He stepped up behind her, leaned his head over her shoulder and said softly, “Your father would no’ want to rot away before his children.”

  A swell of nausea overcame her. She pressed her fists into her belly, swallowing it down. Hot tears clouded her vision again. She wanted to say things, to tell Aulay that her father was a good man, that he didn’t deserve this death. She wanted to say that she’d failed him, and for that, she would never forgive herself. But no words came out. She began to lean forward, as if pushed by an unseen force. She felt faint.

  Aulay caught her with an arm around her waist and pulled her back into his chest, holding her upright. “Ah, leannan,” he said, caressing her head. “It will be all right,” he promised her. “On my word, it will be all right.”

  He was wrong—it would never be all right. Lottie had failed to save her father and her clan and it would never be all right.

  “We’ll have a proper ceremony, aye?” he said soothingly into her ear. “I’ll give you and your brothers a bit of time to prepare yourself.”

  How did one prepare to toss her father’s body into the sea? She couldn’t do it. She wanted to lie down and close her eyes until the pain in her heart and head eased. Forever, in other words, for the pain in her heart would never ease. “Is that why we’ve sailed? To bury him?” she asked tearfully.

  But Aulay never answered her, because someone below began to shout for him. He let go of her, the warmth and hard wall of his body disappearing from her back. “Go, now, and tell your brothers. I’ll send your actor up to help you.”

  Emptiness surrounded Lottie as Aulay hurried down the steps and strode across the deck.

  She watched him go. She could still feel his strength surrounding her, could s
till sense the small bit of comfort she’d felt with him firmly at her back. She thought of the way he’d held her in the stable—so tenderly, and at the same time, his hold unbreakable.

  It felt like a dream. Everything felt like a sad, sweet dream.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  THERE WAS NO wind to speak of as they made their way from Aalborg into Kattegat Bay, and progress was slow. The tiny pinprick of light behind them was also moving slowly, and had made no gains on the Reulag Balhaire for several hours.

  Not one of the men who peered through the spyglass—Beaty, Gilroy, Iain the Red and MacLean—could be certain that a ship was actually shadowing them, or was merely headed for the sea. But the steady path of that ship and the timing of its appearance made it suspect in Aulay’s mind. He didn’t want to lose sight of it.

  The sooner they had the burial done, the sooner they could turn their attention to outmaneuvering that ship.

  He understood from MacLean that Lottie and her healer had washed her father’s body. But with no winding sheets to wrap the body, and no mort cloth to cover him, they had used the coverlet and linens from Aulay’s bunk.

  “No coins for his eyes,” MacLean lamented.

  “At least we’ve got suitable weights,” Beaty muttered as MacLean moved away. He and Aulay had agreed there was no reason to distress the Livingstones any further by explaining the body had to be weighted so that it would not go trundling off across the waves, bobbing along behind them in their wake. It was better this way—with the cloak of darkness, they’d not know what happened to their father’s corpse, which seemed to be the kindest thing the Mackenzies could do for them.

  The actor, Duff, and MacLean took on the task of fashioning a funeral bier from the spines of a whisky cask. The bier would hold the body as Aulay read the scriptures that would commend the old man’s soul to God.

  When all the preparations had been made, Aulay hung a lantern at the starboard railing in the same spot the Livingstones had come on board a few days ago...or had it been weeks? It seemed a lifetime ago in many ways. He sent MacLean to assemble the family and begin the procession, and signaled to Iain the Red’s brother, Malcolm, to play the funeral dirge on his pipes.

  The Livingstone clan—those who weren’t so far in their cups to impede their ability to walk—gathered solemnly, leaning against one another, staring morosely at their feet or the sky. Another set of them appeared carrying the bier between them, with the old man’s body laid carefully on top. The bier was followed by Lottie and her brothers, walking three abreast, hands held.

  Lottie had washed her face and braided her hair, and had dressed in Aulay’s clothes once more. Her skin had an unearthly paleness to it that made her look wraith-like. Grief had a way of reducing a person to a shadow—Lottie seemed frail, nothing like the spirited young woman who had taken his ship.

  When the men had placed the bier on the ship’s railing, Aulay signaled Malcolm to cease the pipes. He opened the Bible his mother had given him on the occasion of his first voyage as captain. He recited the passages from rote, really, not hearing or registering the words. It was never an easy thing to give a body to the sea, no matter the circumstance. His mind wandered as he read. Was this the sum of the old man’s life? To have squandered it in the chase of some ill-begotten scheme, only to be slipped into the dark waters of the sea?

  He listened to the desperate sounds of the youngest Livingstone, trying so very hard not to weep. He listened to the keening of the giant. He glanced at all of the old man’s children once or twice and despaired for Lottie. She stared straight ahead over the top of her father’s body, her empty gaze fixed into the night’s middle distance, her expression grim.

  Aulay ended with Isaiah, “‘So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.’”

  Judging by the lack of comfort on any Livingstone’s face, Aulay wondered if any of them truly believed God had them in hand. All signs pointed to the opposite.

  He turned to Lottie. “Is there anything more you’d like to add, then?”

  She shook her head. Aulay nodded at his first mate. Malcolm began to play the pipes, and the Mackenzies lifted the bier and tilted it so that the body slid off and into the sea. The splash startled them all, and the giant began to sway, his moaning so loud that it arced over the small pipes. The Mackenzie men shifted uncomfortably, none of them understanding how to cope with a damaged giant.

  Lottie linked her arm through the giant’s and rested her head against his shoulder, whispering to him. After a moment or two of gulping his sobs, he stopped wailing and turned to Duff, who put an arm around his shoulders and led him away.

  MacLean, unsteady on his feet, held up a flagon. “To the chief,” he said. “Slàinte mhath.” He took a good long swig, then passed the flagon to the next man as he dragged his sleeve across his mouth. And so it went, the whisky passed around, every man offering up a toast before drinking deeply from the flagon. But when it came to Lottie, she refused it, turned away from all of them, and disappeared into the dark.

  Aulay was the last to receive the flagon. He drank, then gave the order the Livingstones were to be corralled. “Put them in the hold with a guard and a cask of their whisky,” he instructed. The last thing he needed were drunkards careening around his deck. The more important question of what to do with the Livingstones in Scotland still loomed.

  “What, why?” one of them complained as he swayed into his neighbor.

  “You kept our captain tied like a roasted pig. If he says you’re to go down into the hold, then down you’ll go,” Beaty said gruffly.

  There was some arguing about it, but the Livingstones were too drunk to fight and allowed themselves to be escorted, particularly with the promise of whisky.

  With the Livingstone clan below deck, the Mackenzies began the arduous task of emptying and sinking whisky casks. They had made it halfway through those stacked on the deck when Beaty interrupted Aulay. “The ship, she’s gaining on us, she is.”

  Aulay squinted into the darkness. He couldn’t even make out the pinprick of light any longer. “You’re certain, are you?” he asked as Beaty handed him the spyglass.

  “Aye. She’s tacked a wee bit east and north and caught a good wind, she has.”

  Aulay lifted the spyglass and spotted the hazy light in the distance. The ship had definitely gained ground. “Leave the whisky,” he said. “Tack north, then east.”

  “Aye,” Beaty said. “You ought to get some sleep, Cap’n, if you donna mind me saying. We’ll need you when the sun rises. I’ll fetch you if we need you before then.”

  Aulay reluctantly agreed. He’d reached the limits of his exhaustion, but he knew that what was ahead for the rest of the night was an arduous task, and come morning, he’d be fortunate if his men could keep to their feet. He would be no use to them if he were as exhausted as they would be.

  He made his way to his quarters and entered without any thought other than a pressing desire to sleep. The interior was dark, the smell fetid. How long before the stench of death would be gone? Someone had closed the portholes and pulled the heavy linen drapes over them, as was the custom when a person died. They said it kept the ghost from escaping. In this case, the old man’s ghost had nowhere to go and could not escape, so Aulay pushed back the drapery and opened the window. A bit of night light and the salty smell of the sea filtered in, enabling him to see better. He made his way to the next porthole, nearly stumbling over Lottie when he did. He had not seen her lying on the bare bunk, curled onto her side, her back to the door.

  He pushed her feet aside and sat on the end of his bunk. “Have you eaten, then?”

  “No,” she said meekly. “I canna possibly.”

  “Aye, you can, if you donna wish to follow your father into the sea.”

  She gasped and rolled
over, sitting up. “How dare you say such a wretched thing?”

  “Lying here without food or drink? What else am I to think?” He noticed some salted beef and a biscuit on the table beside his bunk that someone had brought her from the hold. How he would ever pay for the cargo they’d lost, he couldn’t say. He’d think on that later—for now, he was exhausted and had a few days at sea ahead of him. And while he felt exceedingly sympathetic for the lass who had just lost her father, he had very little patience for anything that did not move them forward and away from the events of these last few days. What choice did any of them have?

  Lottie pushed her legs over the edge of the bunk, bracing her hands on either side of them. He picked up the biscuit and held it out to her.

  She wrinkled her nose. “I’m no’ hungry.”

  “Eat.”

  She snatched it with exasperation.

  Aulay went to the sideboard and rummaged around there until he found a candle. The light flared when he lit it. He looked at Lottie again. Her hair, unbound, fell long around her, almost to her waist, and framed her bonny face. Dark circles shadowed her eyes, as if she’d long been ill.

  “Eat,” he said again.

  “It tastes like wood. Everything tastes like wood. I feel like wood.” She took a small bite of the biscuit and made a face.

  “It will have to do, lass. We’ve no’ time to fish, and it looks as if we have a ship in pursuit of us.”

  She looked up with eyes wide with alarm. “The Danes?”

  “I donna know,” he said. “And I donna intend to let them get close enough to see who they are.”

  Her lashes fluttered and she glanced down at her biscuit.

  She looked so forlorn that Aulay was suddenly overwhelmed with a desire to take her into his arms, to hold her, to lie to her and promise that all would be well. Why am I so enticed by this lass? She had likely ruined him and yet, he couldn’t help but want her.

  Sometimes, a man just knows.

  He’d had the same ridiculous thought early at the start of their acquaintance, when she’d stepped on board his ship and had conquered him with her beauty and the spark in her eye.